Manifesting Dissidence - Goodbye 2024!

Goodbye 2024!

It’s been a challenging year and I end it recovering from a severe stage four vitamin B12 deficiency, which I became aware of while I was in Indonesia this past summer recovering from the breakdown I suffered following Manifest Differently, and working with friends/colleagues on the Bangkit/Arise book chronicling CAMP’s 2018 - 2022 international exchange & residency project with artists from Yogyakarta. While in Indonesia, I fell ill with swollen lymph nodes accompanied by a fever of 103 degrees Fahrenheit, which thankfully subsided after two rounds of antibiotics. When I returned to San Francisco I saw my doctor and she was perplexed by the results of my blood tests, which showed that I had extra large red blood cells; following several more rounds of tests, I was diagnosed with the severe B12 deficiency. I take it as a cautionary reminder of the impacts stress can have on our lives and the need to prioritize health above all else.

Circling back around, in a previous post I noted:

I think back on this past year and it should have been a great celebration filled with lots of love and pride for having spent three years of my time, energy, and livelihood devoted to a project which had deep meaning for me personally, but also on a much greater scale because of its roots in anti-colonialism and the stories it tells, including the story of Palestine, and while much of it was that for those who experienced it, for me it was a year of betrayals on so many different levels, a year of trying to hold myself together while picking up the pieces as they were falling off, and a year that left me feeling empty in the end. I think the best depiction of who I was when all was said and done is the video of me by myself at Minnesota Street Project scooting along on my ass cleaning up the remnants from an exhibition that had so much more potential, had I not failed through my own impetuousness and not following my deeper instincts. The failure was all mine and mine alone, and man have I paid dearly and heavily for it.

In truth, this past year and a half was a great celebration filled with lots of love and pride for having spent three years of my time, energy, and livelihood devoted to a project which has deep meaning for me personally, as well as on a much greater scale because of its roots in anti-colonialism and the stories it’s told and continues telling through the powerful work created by the over 50 participating artists, poets, community organizers, and humanities scholars & practitioners. Manifest Differently was a project three years in the making and presentation and an exciting benchmark for Clarion Alley Mural Project, fulfilling all of the goals poet Kim Shuck and I envisioned. I am deeply grateful for everyone who committed their time, energy, and creativity to the project.

However, the past year was also one of the most challenging periods I’ve experienced, mentally, emotionally, and physically; and that says a lot, as it was coming off six previous years of the same, each one building from the last; and each one a lesson in trust and disbelief, personally, professionally, and publicly, in equal measures.

The origins of this chainwreck from Hell is none other than (drumroll please) … the State of Israel. Yes, it’s true, the State of Israel isn’t just Hell for Palestinians, the State of Israel is Hell for anyone interested in truth and justice, and anyone who is anti-settler-colonialism and anti-racist. The State of Israel is not about Judaism, though the State of Israel has used and abused Judaism to create a settler-colonial country club over the past 76 years, violently forcing Palestinians from their homeland, as well as creating an open-air prison in Gaza, violently occupying Palestinian land, and imprisoning thousands of Palestinians for the crime of living on their own land, or rather, just for living.

This Hell entered my and Clarion Alley Mural Project’s lives beginning in 2017 when the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) requested a meeting to discuss their displeasure with the mural The Will To Live/Arab Liberation Mural. A year later, five of CAMP’s murals with messaging in support of Palestine experienced twelve hits of hate crime graffiti over the course of two months; these acts of hate crime graffiti continued relentlessly for another year, wracking up 21 hits. Then in 2022, the San Francisco Public Library censored The Will To Live/Arab Liberation Mural as part of an exhibition that I, CAMP, and my co-curator Maw Shein Win had spent four months working on with the Library; and even though the library received over 2,000 letters from the public demanding the exhibition be reinstated, SFPL wouldn’t do so. And in 2023 the world began watching the active genocide Israel has launched against the Palestinian peoples in Gaza, which is still active and amplifying, as well as spreading to the West Bank. CAMP’s murals in support of Palestine also began to get hit again.

Hate crime graffiti on Clarion Alley, 2024

While this has been extremely stressful and has taken a toll, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the United States’ ongoing financial support of Israel’s crimes are two of the greatest human rights abuses the world has ever seen. This impunity for such acts is also creating an environment in the United States in which Palestine and it’s allies are both censored and punished for defending the human rights of Palestinians, to the point that some U.S. states have made criticism of Israel illegal and people are currently losing their jobs and livelihoods over this criticism. I and Clarion Alley Mural Project will continue to unapologetically support the human rights of Palestinians/Palestine and for the rights of their allies, myself included.

For the New Year, I pray for peace and justice - for Israel and the United States to recognize these human rights abuses and to rectify these acts, as well as for people to learn to be open-hearted and to stop creating these violent and exclusive settler-colonial states and environments. I also pray for the end to the censorship of the right to peacefully protest and for the end to the censorship and punishment of people who criticize Israel, which is in complete opposition to the U.S. constitution.